As far as I know, in the early sixties, the original site of Watson
Bagel was four blocks in from Lyons Avenue on Clinton Place going
towards Clinton Avenue in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey.
It was only two blocks from my house and on the corner there was
a defunct neighborhood gas station. After this empty lot there was
a series of small stores and Watson had, at the time, taken over
at least three of the four stores at this location and made them
into a large working area on Clinton Place. It wasn’t an impressive
store front from the outside but I don’t think they dealt
with the public at this time; their main forte was supplying the
surrounding supermarkets and restaurants with their bagel needs.
Since it was a Jewish neighborhood there were plenty of customers
to keep this small bakery very busy but you could walk in and buy
some fresh bagels if you didn’t mind getting some flour dust
on your shoes. The floors were always covered in this flour dust
which, I imagine, was the result of opening a lot of fifty pound
flour bags and pouring them into the mixers in the process of making
the bagel dough. One of my friends worked at the bakery and gave
me an informal tour of the facilities after hours.
When I first entered the Watson bakery I was greeted by a large
room with a high ceiling. There were some offices to right but the
building was essentially dominated by the large work area. In the
middle of this room facing to the left side of the building were
two huge motorized flour mixers with tables on each side of them.
The mixers reminded me of the motorized cement mixers I had seen
some masons use to mix the mortar they needed to repair a section
of a sidewalk. I guess it was all the same principle but I was hoping
the mixers Watson was using were made for the food industry! Behind
the mixers and all the way to the left wall were hundreds of bags
of flour stacked upon each other on the other side of an open load
bearing wall. Towards the back of the room and adjacent to the ovens
was a room I didn’t go into but I imagine it was where they
formed the dough and had the boiling water baths which were an essential
part of the bagel making process. Everything was covered in the
flour dust despite the efforts of the workers to keep the place
clean. I guess a great deal of dust hung suspended in the air during
the working hours and then dropped to the floor when the activities
stopped at night. The stone ovens, at least four of them, were made
from brick and they were huge. They were much like the fancy brick
pizza ovens you see in the upscale pizzerias nowadays with the workers
using huge peels to usher the bagels in and out of the ovens.
The second site of Watson Bagel was closer to my house by a whole
block and it was setup to serve the public. It was clean and free
of the flour dust that dominated the original site but it was a
much smaller store. All you could see in this second store was a
long oven equipped with a motorized conveyor belt system that took
the bagels through the ovens and eventually dumped them onto a table
where the workers sorted them into the different bins depending
upon the type of bagel it was. They had at least a dozen varieties
of bagels and if you loved bagels, this was the place to be! When
you opened the door, the smell of fresh baked bagels instantly assaulted
your senses. In fact, I consider the doughy smell one of the top
sensory experiences in my life! There were always hot bagels coming
out of the ovens and sometimes I couldn’t wait until I got
home. I would steal one from the bag, break it in half and pick
the warm, tender bread out from the center of the bagel with my
fingers on the way home before devouring the rest of the bagel.
Talk about a culinary heaven on earth, this was as close to it as
I would get in my life! This second store was in addition to the
original site since it was considered a nuisance to have people
constantly coming in and out of the original bakery to buy bagels!
These sites didn’t last more than a couple years before another
site opened up due to the rapid growth of the business.
When the third site was opened, the other two sites were closed,
since this third store combined the previous two sites into one
building. All you saw when you walked into the Watson Bagel store
on Chancellor Avenue in Irvington was bins of different bagels and
a counter where you paid for the bagels of your choice. A lot of
the bagels were cold from sitting around too long and I never liked
them although they tasted all right; I guess I was just spoiled
by getting hot bagels every time I went into the old stores. The
bakery was at the rear of the store and was a sight unseen by the
regular walk in customer. The bulk of their business was still centered
on supplying the surrounding area with their bagel needs through
an evening delivery service but by now, the public sales of bagels
had increased to a point where it rivaled the commercial accounts
and the Chancellor Avenue store was made to serve both sources of
business. Since I still had a friend who worked there, I was brought
into the business on a temporary basis to deliver the bagels to
the surrounding stores as a driver.
On my first night I was a passenger in the company station wagon
which doubled as a deliver car while my friend showed me the details
of the route he drove. I must tell you the car was loaded with dozens
of individual bags of hot, fresh bagels of all types and it was
unlike any drive I had ever taken from the sensory point of view.
The biggest challenge for me was not to pilfer the bagel bags in
the rear of the car!! We were about halfway through the route when
suddenly a police siren started yelping directly behind us. Instead
of slowing down my friend smiled at me as he stepped on the gas
and quickly explained to me the cops chased him almost every night
in an effort to get free bagels from him. In time, he decided to
play a game with them and made them chase him through the streets
to his next drop destination before giving up a dozen bagels! On
my maiden drive he made two quick turns and another turn in an effort
to shake them but they caught up to us in a shopping center where
our next drop was located. They exited their police car with their
lights still flashing and jokingly said “Hey guys, How’s
the bagels tonight?” They were all laughing about my buddy’s
quick turns to avoid them and I remember feeling very out of place
because I didn’t know them.
The rest of the night was uneventful and in the following nights
I found it quite a challenging to stay awake all night long and
drive safely. In the process, I guess I got used to the intoxicating
smell of the bagels and after a couple of weekends of this I decided
it wasn’t my calling and bowed out. Besides, the pay wasn’t
all that great but I still miss the amazing experience of driving
down the road with a car full of hot fresh bagels to this day!
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